


Beyond Sorrow's Own Joys

by lori (zakhad)



Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-14
Updated: 2009-12-14
Packaged: 2017-10-04 10:41:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zakhad/pseuds/lori
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They left the Nexus - or did they?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beyond Sorrow's Own Joys

The crack of an axe splitting wood echoed through the forest. He jogged toward the sound, the heat already making him sticky - why had he worn a long-sleeved shirt? Habit, perhaps.

The woodsman had his back to him. He stopped and watched the axe, glinting in the sunlight through shifting leaves, swoop down on a round of wood.

_Crack!_

With several back-and-forth jiggles of the handle, the woodsman used the axe to finish pulling the sundered chunk of oak in two. He paused to wipe his face with a kerchief and flick away a couple of flies. After resting a moment, he swung the axe once more, splitting half the round in two.

He chopped the rest of the wood into smaller chunks. When he was done, he seems to notice at last that he had an observer.

They stood in silence, gazing upon one another, for a long time.

"Good afternoon," he said, keeping his tone pleasant.

The woodsman only stared at him. He wondered if they spoke the same language. He studied the brown curls, with hints of gold and gray in them, and the hazel eyes. The firm set of the jaw. The sweat glistening on the bare tanned chest and shoulders.

Finally, an answer came.

"Have we met?"

~^~^~^~^~^~  


"Who is she?"

He turned to the picture over the mantel. They sat in the parlor, drinking tea. His guest looked out of place in the plaid shirt and dusty brown work pants, perched on the edge of a brocaded chair.

The picture was of a smiling woman in a brilliant sequined green dress. He remembered they had been at some sort of party, dancing -- her face was flushed. The photographer had caught her in the act of tucking stray red hair in a bun on the back of her head.

He knew her, intimately. Yet he couldn't recall how, or where.

"She was. . . ."

The words wouldn't come. His guest seemed not at all surprised by it.

"Important."

"Yes. Very important."

Again, their eyes met, as the woodsman put the delicate cup on its saucer on the table between their chairs. "Don't you hate that you can't remember?"

~^~^~^~^~^~

They met again, infrequently. The seasons changed. Sometimes there were others. He would wake to find his wife there with him, but she came and went at random as he thought of her. Other mornings he would be alone. Still others, his children would romp in and bounce on the bed to wake him, excited by new-fallen snow.

But there was something about the woodsman that filled a gap. He found himself looking forward to seeing the man again. He often sought him, but didn't always find him. It seemed to happen only when the desire for companionship was mutual.

He wished he could remember his friend's name.

The rarest of all days was one on which he saw *her* -- the redhead from the picture in the parlor.

He would wake on the ship, in his old quarters, and march through long corridors full of people whose names he could greet them by but forgot the instant they passed out of sight.

She would be there at the end of the walk. On the bridge, or in sickbay. Smiling.

When he woke the next day, he would inevitably stay in bed, daydreaming of her smile and wishing he would wake again on the ship.

~^~^~^~^~^~

He woke one morning, and couldn't stand it.

Running through the snow-bound woods, he sought out his friend the woodsman. He found his friend standing in a meadow looking down at the running water of a brook. The place was vaguely familiar. Just like every other place -- the world was at once familiar and unfamiliar, in ways he couldn't identify.

He stopped next to his friend and looked down. Their faces reflected back up at them, rippling with the water, and he saw through the vapor the winter made of his breath two children looking back at them.

"Where are we?" he breathed. "That isn't. . . ."

"I think we must be in hell." His friend's face was rarely so serious. Hazel eyes met hazel. "All this time I thought I was home. But something's. . . ."

"Missing."

"Yes. Many things are missing. I can't tell you what, but -- "

"People. Do you see people? Sometimes?"

His friend's mouth hung open. Vapor streamed from it, forming a plume of white. "They come and go when I think of them. Except for you, I don't see you unless you. . . ."

"I'd say it was a dream, if not for that. If not for you."

They looked again at their reflections. This time, two old men looked back at them.

"We have to get out of here," the woodsman said.

"How?"

"We have to remember. It's got to be the key to it. I don't know how I know, but remembering is the hardest thing to do -- because we're immersed in this dream world, where there is no reality. That isn't me." He pointed a gloved hand at the stream. "None of the reflections I've seen have been me."

"My name. . . ."

He took another step, the toe of his boot in the water. Hands on his thighs, he crouched and touched his reflection, putting concentric rings of ripples over his face. When the water stilled again the face looked more as he felt it should.

"My name," he repeated, insisting, as if bringing it into being, "is Jean-Luc Picard. Of the Federation starship *Enterprise.* I do not belong here."

"That's right." His friend knelt beside him and studied his own reflection. "I'm James Kirk. I was. . . I am captain of the *Enterprise.* But we've said this before. We've done this before. We've talked. . . I left. With you."

"But we are still here."

~^~^~^~^~^~

"Look," his friend whispered, turning.

As he turned too, he realized that they had moved. Somehow they stood overlooking a grassy plain.

"Winter's gone," he murmured.

"It was never here. It only came because we expected it to. I've been experimenting with it. . . . Haven't you?"

"Some. Most of the time I simply. . . ."

"Exist," Kirk said. It was easier to use the name now. Easier to think of himself with a name. "Try something with me -- jump down."

He stared at the cliff at their feet. Part of him knew there should be fear. Most of him still attempted to shake off the lethargy. Kirk took a step, and he forced his own foot forward as well --

They were on the bottom abruptly. Standing. Not a scratch on them.

"This is wrong," he said.

"Hell," Kirk said. Not a curse -- a label. A fact.

~^~^~^~^~^~

They walked, staying together, experimenting. It was, in a way, a time of sharing. Memories came back to both of them with practice.

"I think I was here, too," Picard said, looking around at the world Kirk had conjured. "Once. The buildings were slightly different. There was another one over there. . . ."

"This isn't getting us anywhere." Kirk scanned the horizon. "We need a way back to reality."

"I wonder. . . ." Picard met Kirk's eyes again. "Are there others like us here? Who want out?"

Kirk's slow smile preceded curt laughter. "Shall we find out, Captain?"

They gripped each other's arms to anchor themselves one to another, and with a nod from Kirk, both concentrated --

The brief disorientation shook them up.

There were others.

One of them turned to look at them with eyes deeper and older than most. She smiled.

"Guinan," Picard said.

"I thought you'd never get here," she replied, gesturing at the others. "We've been hoping you would."

"Where. . . ."

"This is no where, Captain. It's not even a when," Guinan said. "It simply is. Accept that and let's move on to how to get to where and when."

"HOW?"

Uncertain who asked it first. Picard didn't know the others, but names no longer mattered -- from the gleams in their eyes, they knew who they were and were eager to become those people again. However long they'd spent in this nether world where time had no meaning and place was only as solid as your belief in it, these people had rediscovered themselves.

"Desire," Guinan said.

They understood. People nodded. Eyes closed.

And in the brilliance of his imagination, resurrected from disuse in a place where thought became something akin to reality, Picard desired. He heard muted exclamations from the others --

"Daddy!" "Maya, my darling -- " "Priscilla! I've missed you!" "YES!" "Come 'ere, boy, there's a good dog!" "Spock! Spock, it's really -- "

Picard had thought he had experienced sensations, touch and taste and sound, until then -- until the crash of alarmed voices, of the texture of the air and the artificial sounds of scans being run, overwhelmed him.

He awoke on a biobed -- the light became tolerable. The noise filterable. He could sort through the sensory data now, better than before.

Dark eyes met his. Concerned at first, but then her lips tipped into a smile.

"It's him," the musical, familiar voice said as the lips moved. The name was there -- Deanna. The counselor.

"How?" A blurted, rough exclamation -- Riker.

"I don't care," whispered another. "It's enough that he's alive."

"But he was dead -- how can you explain this when you performed the autopsy yourself? He was dead and he's been dead -- we were all at the funeral!"

Picard laughed at it. Riker, Troi, sickbay, and best of all, the touch of Beverly's hand, closing on his arm tightly, probably trying to discern whether he was real or not.

He was home. Again. It may have been that he'd come back before, but whatever he had experienced that led up to his death was in the past -- he could try again.

He could live.

Hazel eyes met blue. She smiled. There had been no joy -- not this piercing, not this clear, not this specific -- and now there was.

"Beverly."

~^~^~^~^~^~

The woods were quiet but for the rhythmic crack of an axe splitting wood.

He wandered toward the sound.

The woodsman turned around. Hazel eyes met hazel.

"We're still here," one of them said.

He looked away, at the trees, and gently, snow began to fall.

"I think. . . that we always will be here, my friend," he murmured.

"I can't accept that."

He looked at Kirk again. "I think we will have to. But, there may be something we can do to make it more endurable."

~^~^~^~^~

They walked together in the corridors of a ship.

This waking period, it was his ship. The next, it would be Kirk's. Sometimes the crew became a mixture of uniform styles -- it didn't matter.

They stood on the bridge together.

"Tomorrow," Kirk said, "has always been what kept me going. This was a good idea."

Picard stared at the other captain, thinking of what it had taken to convince him of that, and nodded. He glanced at the officer at the helm -- a figment, he knew -- and demanded a course laid in.

Tomorrow would, unfortunately, be a pale shadow of what it could have been. Their imaginations always fell short of reality, he was certain. The galaxy was full of unknown surprises and adventure. It had been why they'd gone out into the stars in the first place. But if this was all they could hope for in this endless cycle of days that, for all he knew, were of arbitrary duration. . . .

"Take us out of orbit, ensign."

The planet dropped off the viewscreen. The *Enterprise* was away on another mission.

It was, in Picard's mind at least, a memorial to a life he'd loved, a legacy he'd inherited. Judging from the avid look on Kirk's face, he was thinking the same. If this was eternity, at least it would serve this purpose.

Perhaps somewhen it would serve another purpose. They could break free -- they had done it twice. To do it again might complicate things beyond comprehension -- as long as the Nexus existed they would exist within it, and fragmenting into reality would be futile. Perhaps, if they focused their thoughts and clung as closely as possible to the reality they'd known, after much practice they could break through into the real again and disband the Nexus completely, to put an end to the endless existence without real meaning.

The galaxy was full of endless possibilities.

"Engage."

In the echoes of memories still returning from the limits of finite time, he heard her laughter. He would not imagine her. No hollow facsimile would he permit.

*Beverly.*

He wished, came as close as he could in the numbness of the Nexus to longing, that he could cry.

~^~^~^~^~

silently if,out of not knowable  
night's utmost nothing,wanders a little guess  
(only which is this world)more my life does  
not leap than with the mystery your smile

sings or if(spiralling as luminous  
they climb oblivion)voices who are dreams,  
less into heaven certainly earth swims  
than each my deeper death becomes your kiss

losing through you what seemed myself,i find  
selves unimaginably mine;beyond  
sorrow's own joys and hoping's very fears

yours is the light by which my spirit's born:  
yours is the darkness of my soul's return  
you are my sun,my moon,and all my stars

e.e.cummings


End file.
